Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Fantastic Steam and Iron, Infernal Machines and Juggernauts [Both Historical and Fantasy]



Juggernaut: Any large, overpowering, destructive force or object, as war, a giant battleship.

Infernal Machine: A concealed or disguised explosive device intended to destroy life or property.

Steampunk: A subgenre of science fiction and fantasy featuring advanced machines and other technology based on steam power of the 19th century and taking place in a recognizable historical period or a fantasy world.








Sunday, August 1, 2021

Mythania

 

                                                    Juggernaut by Jean Paul Fiction

Welcome to a fantastical realm of steam, steel, and sorcery—a world where juggernaut war machines ravage the landscape, where stupendous air fleets dominate the skies, where astral mages battle enchanted automatons, and where the march of progress is moved as much by gears of iron as it is by weave of spell.

Welcome to the World of Mythania.

Image Gallery

 

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Gothic Armor on Rails


This is a hand-built model of the armoured train from the War Hammer 40K universe, made by the guys from the Games Workshop studio team. 

The power source of the railways of the Imperium all depend on the level of technology of the planets themselves, in one of the Gaunts Ghost books (think Necropolis) they describe fighting in a train yard surrounded by the wreck of Diesel Shunters, Locomotives and rolling stock. In Warriors of Ultramar they mention a high speed rail network that while automated they still contained a driver which sounds to me very much like how subways and the tube in London are run so guessing electric HST's, the first Siege of Vraks book contains the mention of the massive lumbering trains of the Adeptus Mechanicus making out huge massive Locos. They do not mention what they are powered by but since the Mechanicus use plasma reactors for many large vehicles like Ordinatus arrays (note in Mechanicus an Ordinatus is mounted on a railway wagon) so it is safe to assume these AD Mech Locos were the same.

For the gauge this again is up to the planets, I would guess the Mechanicus would have a standard gauge for their forgeworlds (at a comfortable massive size) but other planets may have gauges as little as 2ft (think narrow gauge lines in Wales) or could go up to as wide as 10ft or more, not really known.

All Aboard!



The gorgeous streamlined steam and diesel locomotives from the 1920s-1930s scream "steampunk" and "dieselpunk" to anyone who can appreciate it, and also provide an ample field for research for train historians and collectors.

 

Mûmakil - Lord of the Rings

Mûmakil were large creatures resembling elephants, often used in battle by the Haradrim. To most cultures, the Mûmakil were creatures of great size, as fearsome as dragons, and to them were ascribed all kinds of strange powers.

Mûmakil resemble elephants, except that they are larger and have six tusks instead of two. Two are on the bottom jaw, two larger tusks are where an elephant's would be, and there were two smaller tusks above those.

No complete Mûmak skeleton has ever been found, but accounts found in both the Red Book of Westmarch and in other scrolls suggest that they stood between fifty and one hundred feet tall (although official top trumps suggest a height of around 35 feet), with four huge tusks and two smaller ones to each side of the mouth. When charging into battle, they bellowed and screeched at great volume, and a thunderous din that shook the very earth preceded the advent of their coming and crushing all in their path. Some Mûmakil also seemed to have lighter grey skin than others.

Virtually nothing is known about how the Haradrim managed to attach the great bamboo and canvas war harness to its back: presumably, they were able to coerce it into kneeling or lying down so that a team could haul the huge framework into place, tying it under the belly of the beast. Hanging from the harness were ropes that the Haradrim used to climb up into the frame and take up their positions on the platforms. Their elevated position allowed them to target an otherwise hidden enemy and gave their arrows and spears a greater range. Gondorian folklore of the time maintains that a shaman, who steered the Mûmak using long reins, was the means by which the beast was tamed in the first place.  Long banners were hung by the frame, their red, grey, and black colors depicting the Eye of Sauron. Before this, they probably had war paint depicting the symbol of the tribe they belonged to.

Mûmakil live in the jungles of Far Harad and some of them were taken in and domesticated by the Haradrim. The Haradrim had been enemies of the kings of Numenor since the second age, when later tyrannical kings began demanding tribute from the fledgling Haradrim tribes. Mûmakil were likely used during the Haradrim wars with Gondor before the War of the Ring, and when their grudge against the men of the West was rekindled by the opportunity to crush Gondor by way of an alliance with Sauron, the armies of Mordor began to include Mûmakil forces.

Among the tribes of Haradrim, a Mûmak would have been, literally, a huge status symbol, and there would have been great competition among the tribes to possess one; it is likely that this competition led to frequent tribal wars. The Mûmakil would have moved with the tribes as they travelled across the desert, which would have been quite often, since something as big as a Mûmak would soon have exhausted the available forage. A dead mûmak was almost as valuable as a living one, as it would have provided the tribe with a mountain of resources: tusks, bone, hide, dyes, sinew and meat that could be salted, providing the tribe with food for months. 

It is said that a Mûmak could be killed with a single shot to the eye (which was not depicted in the live-action film). Otherwise, it was able to withstand a substantial onslaught against its thick hide before eventually falling. The moving war towers were practically invincible, but shots to the head from spears, javelins, and arrows could kill it. The archers of the Morthond vale killed several in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and in the books, all the Mumakil were killed. However, some appeared to survive and retreat in the movie.



Infernal Machines -- Fulton

Fulton's Sketch of the Dorothea

 Floating Torpedo (mine)

On Monday the 14 October 1805 a large crowd of people gathered on the beach below Walmer Castle near Deal in Kent. They were watching the DORETHEA, a Danish brig of about 200 tons moored half a mile off shore, and the small boats that were working around her. In spite of rumours nothing exciting happened and the crowd dispersed in the evening.

The following afternoon the beach was almost deserted when Lady Hester Stanhope, niece and housekeeper to Prime Minister Pitt who lived in the castle, strolled down to chat with a man standing by the water's edge. After a short conversation he tied a handkerchief to his walking stick and waved it at the brig, remarking to her as he looked at his watch, "Fifteen minutes is her time." Two boats then rowed past the brig and something was thrown into the water from each of them.

A quarter of an hour later there was an explosion which lifted the brig out of the water and broke her in two. Although the noise was little more than that made by a 4-pounder gun she was a complete wreck within a few seconds, the ends sinking immediately and leaving the sea covered with splintered planks.

The man on the beach was Robert Fulton, a 40 year old American who was known in England under the pseudonym 'Mr Francis'. Urgent business had called Mr Pitt away to London, but Admiral Holloway and many commanding officers of the fleet in the Downs were present. Twenty minutes before the explosion one of them, Capt. Kingston, had declared that if one of the devices had been placed under his cabin when he was at dinner, he should feel no concern for the consequence.

Unfortunately for Fulton the successful demonstration of his explosive devices, variously known as 'carcasses' or 'coffers' and by him as `torpedoes`, came too late because three months later, on 26 January 1806, his sponsor William Pitt was dead and the new administration, a coalition of Pitt`s enemies, paid him off in September 1806 with 1653 pounds 18 shillings and 8 pence. (Pitt had promised him 100,000 pounds not to divulge his plans to the enemy) They were influenced by Lord St. Vincent who remarked to Fulton that "Pitt was the greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of war which they who command the sea do not want, and which, if successful, would deprive them of it." He was not the last man to believe that something could be uninvented. 

A year earlier things had looked more hopeful. On 1 October 1804, with the weather favourable, Admiral Lord Keith, responsible for defending Britain against Napoleon's invasion attempts, resolved to attack the flotilla of 150 vessels moored off Boulogne with the devices Fulton had been preparing at New Romney during the first two weeks of September. The largest of these, five of which were built, was an oblong vessel, 21 feet long, with wedge shaped ends. It was caulked, run with pitch and covered in canvas. The charge consisted of 40 barrels of gunpowder covered with flint chippings and tightly packed. Pulling out a pin allowed a clockwork mechanism, made by Cutler & Co. (who later received 1533 pounds 13 shillings and 7 pence for their work) to rotate for a predetermined time and fire an ordinary gunlock with a two inch barrel containing a musket charge of powder. The total weight was about 2 tons and the ballast was arranged so that the top floated level with the surface of the water.

A line with a buoyed grappling hook was trailed astern. He also prepared five smaller ones and ten using hogshead barrels. 

The French were naturally alarmed when the 74-gun MONARCH, with frigates, sloops and numerous other small vessels arrived off their coast on the evening of Tuesday the 2 October and they mustered troops and field guns along the shore and stationed gunboats around their flotilla.

At a quarter past nine the boats and explosion vessels from the British squadron carrying Fulton's devices, and other boats, known as catamarans, which floated low in the water towing the larger carcasses, rowed down on the French vessels. The men pulled out the pins and released their charges to drift on the tide and entangle with the enemy's anchor cables. The attack finished at four o'clock the following morning by which time all the charges had been exploded. In spite of a continuous heavy fire of round shot and musketry there were no British casualties and, in the confusion of the night, hopes were high that a great deal of damage had been done to the enemy. In fact no great damage was done. The explosions alongside the enemy vessels merely gave them a violent shock and canted them sideways. 

The opposition newspapers immediately attacked the use of the new devices, but Lord Melville wrote to Keith that anything which could be used against the enemy should be embraced.

An attack with small carcasses on Fort Rouge, a pile fort off Calais, on the 8 December using the Susannah explosion vessel and two carcasses, was more successful and part of the breastwork was knocked down. 

Fulton was not the only inventor with ideas to attack the French invasion forces. On 11 November 1803 a Charles Rogier had written to Lord Keith with plans for a gas balloon, 32 feet in diameter, which would carry nearly 900 lb of `spiked rockets`, shells, etc., and use a clockwork mechanism to drop them on the enemy, particularly at night. Nothing more was heard of this early idea for aerial bombardment. 

In October 1805 Congreve`s rockets were used to bombard Boulogne from the sea.

Meanwhile Fulton, puzzled by the failure of his devices, was doing more experiments. His new torpedoes consisted of a copper cylinder containing about 100lb of powder suspended beneath a cork float. They were intended to float right underneath the hull of an enemy but, when they were used in attack on the French in Boulogne on the 30 September 18O5, the enemy vessels were showered with water but otherwise undamaged. The only French casualties were from shots fired from Capt. Secombe's galley as he dropped his torpedoes alongside a gunboat and from a salvaged torpedo which blew up as it was being taken ashore. Two weeks later Fulton had the answer; the two torpedoes which blew up the DORETHEA were suspended 15 feet under water and linked by a rope 80 feet long. They drifted on either side of the brig until the connecting line touched the anchor cable and the tide drove them under her bottom. 

Fulton returned to America where, on the third attempt, he blew up a brig in New York Harbour in August 1807. This explosion was witnessed by more than 1000 onlookers. He also proposed an anchored torpedo, in effect a moored mine, which would float at a predetermined depth and be detonated by a ship striking a lever on the top. He considered that 200 or more, moored in a channel, would protect a port and be unsweepable by enemy boats.

Another of his proposals, if adopted, would have been a big improvement on the spar torpedo so popular later in the century. He used a harpoon gun to fire a line attached to the cable linking two of the Dorethea type torpedoes at a ship. According to his experiments the harpoon point would drive through three inches of wood at a range of thirty to fifty feet and, firing at a target six feet square twenty or thirty times he never missed. 


Fulton`s Harpoon Gun
The next occasion the Royal Navy became involved with "infernal machines" was on the 9 June 1855 when two submarine explosions occurred under the paddle vessel MERLIN off Cronstadt in the Gulf of Finland during the war with Russia. They were closely followed by another under her companion the gunboat FIREFLY. On the 2O June one exploded under the paddle frigate VULTURE. No damage was caused and the following day boats from the squadron fished up thirty-three of the mines. 

Those that were brought on board the ships were treated very carelessly. The first one brought on board the Duke of Wellington was deprived of its fuse, swung at a boom and fired at with a rifle to see whether it would explode by mere concussion, but without result. It was then taken down to the poop for dissection. Meanwhile Admiral Seymour on board Exmouth was manipulating an intact machine which exploded, injuring his eyes and face, as well as some of the onlookers. This was followed by a loud report from Admiral Dundas`s cabin in the Duke, but this was only the bursting of a fuse and no harm was done.

The mines consisted of cones of zinc 20 inches long with a diameter of 14 inches. With about 8 lb of gunpowder in the apex, an air chamber ensured that it floated at anchor, base up, a foot or two under the surface. The fuse used a glass tube of sulphuric acid resting on a pad saturated with potassium chlorate. If any of a number of wire rods around the base was moved it struck a copper tube which broke the glass causing a flame which ignited the powder.

The mines had been designed by Professor Jacobi of St. Petersburg and as used were capable of doing little more than break glass and crockery. It is not known why more powerful versions were not deployed. The same fuses were used in Russian Anarchist bombs at the end of the century.
Torpedoes were also used, particularly by the Confederate States, for defensive purposes during the American Civil War. In 1863 the narrow river channel leading past the forts into Mobile Bay was lined with torpedoes, some made out of beer kegs filled with powder, the sides studded with little tubes containing fulminate which exploded on contact, the rest were metal cones with detonating caps.

Torpedoes detonated electrically from the shore were used by the Confederates in the James River in 1863. The gunboat Commodore Jones was blown up by one on 6 May. The banks of the river were searched and the torpedo operators captured. One of the prisoners was placed in a gunboat sweeping the river and gave a great deal of information about the location of the torpedoes.

Commander William Cushing, USN, used a spar torpedo invented by Engineer Lay of the navy to destroy the Confederate States ironclad Albemarle at Plymouth on the Roanoke River in October 1864. An earlier attempt to use a torpedo carried in the Miami during a battle on 5 May failed.

© 1996 Michael Phillips